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Monday, November 14, 2016

Following the results of the Presidential election, I’m sure that many
of you are wondering how planetary exploration will fare at NASA over the next
few years.

The short answer is that nobody knows.

However, I can discuss some of the factors that may decide that
question.

The bottom line will be how well the program is funded.Depending on how political machinations turn
out, I can see situations in which the planetary program could receive
substantially less, about the same, or substantially more than it does this
year.

As SpacePolicyOnline
nicely describes, the first key question will be whether the Republican
party, which controls both houses of Congress, decides to institute major
budget cuts to the overall discretionary budget.The federal budget can be described as a
retirement and medical benefits system (e.g., Social Security and Medicare),
the military, interest payments, and everything else (discretionary
funding).Discretionary spending in
Fiscal Year 2015 was approximately 16% of federal spending (the percentage for
Fiscal Year 2016 would be similar).Since
1990, NASA’s share of the Federal budget has been relatively flat with a slow
decline and today represents around 0.5%.If total Federal spending declines, spending on NASA seems likely to
decline, too.

Source: Wikipedia

For reasons too complex to go into here (but see the SpacePolicyOnline
article), one group of Republicans in the past year has wanted to institute
major cuts to discretionary spending.If
that happens, NASA’s overall spending number will compete for remaining funds
with spending on many other discretionary items (for example, the FBI, National
Parks, infrastructure spending). In this case, I think NASA’s top number would
likely be cut significantly. I also
think it would be unlikely that the planetary program would be spared cuts.

However, if the eventual political consensus is to keep overall
discretionary spending at similar levels as recent years (true political
revolutions are rare), then other political factors will matter.The first is what level of priority the new
Trump government will give to NASA.So
far, all we have are opinion
pieces written by two people associated with the Trump campaign.The Trump administration’s actual policy will
emerge in the coming months to a year or so as the new administration finally
gets around to thinking about small federal agencies around which there is no
major political focus.I’m sure that
whatever policy statements emerge will laud NASA and proclaim lofty goals (NASA
is politically like apple pie; almost everyone professes to love its mission
and inspiration).Real policy, though,
is stated by funding.Will the words be
backed by money?Both the Bush and Obama
administrations, for example, had lofty public goals for NASA – return to the
moon, go to Mars – but their budgets kept NASA’s human spaceflight program
firmly in low orbit.Look to the
President’s proposed annual budgets rather than to speeches.

Whatever NASA top line funding number emerges, I suspect that the
planetary program will retain or potentially increase its share of that
budget.Exploring the solar system has had
strong Congressional support, most notably from Congressman Culberson of Texas,
chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice,
Science, and Related Agencies.In
addition, based on the stated science priorities of both President-elect Trump
and Republicans in Congress, the NASA’s program to study the Earth is likely to
suffer major cuts and the planetary program seems likely to benefit.(For the record, I am strongly opposed to
cuts to the Earth Science program.Humans are dramatically changing our planet whether you look at
increases in greenhouse gasses, the nitrogen cycle, or the transformation of
whole ecosystems to name but a few.Ignoring these changes is like pretending that your illness will go away
if you don’t take medical tests.)

I personally expect that the status quo will persist for the coming
year as the new administration and Congress settle in.I expect that we will begin to learn how NASA
as a whole and the planetary program within that whole will fare starting in
2018.Given the lag in budgets and
eventual mission launches, the final annual budget numbers during the next four
years will determine the planetary program of the mid-2020s.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.